Decreation
Subtitle: the last things of all creatures
By: Paul J. Griffiths
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Waco
Language: eng
Number of pages: 396
ISBN-13: 9781481302296; 9781481302302; 9781481302319
Subjects: Doctrines; Doctrinal Theology; Eschatology; Catholic Church
Description: Death is not the end -- either for humans or for all creatures. But while Christianity has obsessed over the future of humanity, it has neglected the ends for nonhuman animals, inanimate creatures, and angels. In Decreation, Paul J. Griffiths explores how orthodox Christian theology might be developed to include the last things of all creatures. Griffiths employs traditional and historical Christian theology of the last things to create both a grammar and a lexicon for a new eschatology. Griffiths imagines heaven as an endless, repetitively static, communal, and enfleshed adoration of the triune God in which angels, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects each find a place. Hell becomes a final and irreversible separation from God -- annihilation -- sin's true aim and the last success of the sinner. This grammar, Griffiths suggests, gives Christians new ways to think about the redemption of all things, to imagine relationships with nonhuman creatures, and to live in a world devastated by a double fall.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 361-384) and index.
Table of contents: title: The grammar of the last things; title: Doctrine about last things; title: Timespace; title: Angels; title: Humans; title: Plants, animals, inanimate creatures; title: The last things in the devastation; title: Bibliography.